


The Dance of the Ghosts

by Flo_March



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 8x04, Episode Fix-it, Father-Daughter Relationship, Implied Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Implied Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth, Original Character(s), POV Jaime Lannister, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Song: Jenny of Oldstones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 17:57:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19278478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flo_March/pseuds/Flo_March
Summary: Jaime leaves the North behind, or so he believes.«He would have wanted to ride tirelessly, all night and all day, to get to King's Landing as soon as possible. [...] And perhaps, but he didn't allow himself to linger on this fleeting thought, to banish Brienne's last words from his mind. His last words instead echoed continuously, along with Cersei’s name: "She is hateful and so am I." It was true.»Set at the end of 8x04.





	The Dance of the Ghosts

He would have wanted to ride tirelessly, all night and all day, to get to King's Landing as soon as possible. To leave the _cold_ behind as soon as possible, damn if it was cold in this bloody North! And perhaps, but he didn't allow himself to linger on this fleeting thought, to banish Brienne's last words from his mind. _His_ last words instead echoed continuously, along with Cersei’s name: «She is hateful and so am I.» It was true.

At the beginning he had galloped as fast as he could, spurring his horse and himself to the limit of strength, and had also warmed up. But he was no longer the knight of the past, his Golden lion days were truly over. The great battle had weakened him: his body was tired and tried by the cold of the night. It seemed like a lifetime ago since he had ridden to reach the North and, in a way, it was. Now he was heading in the opposite direction, waiting to see again the landscapes familiar to him and less insidious than those severe and unknown lands. He did not know how much time had passed, but it was already late night and it would not have been wise to stop during the day: it was necessary to take advantage of every moment of light. Besides, a man without a hand was too easy a prey — he knew that. He had to keep his eyes open. Even the night hid pitfalls, but nothing could be worse than what he had just fought. He had seen Death in the face and still carried the weight in his body and mind, he reminded himself in reply to a "Wimp, is that what the Lannister house is reduced to?" whispered to him by a voice that had the stamp of his father.

He slowed down the pace and looked around until he saw a secluded enough place in the woods. He tied the animal and sat with his back against a tree, clutching his arms over his chest. Only for a moment, he told himself, only to rest his numb limbs in view of the long journey. «Just for a moment» he muttered before sleep gripped him in his rapacious claws.

The sun was shining. Winter was long over, yet a sun so high in the sky, bright and warm never ceased to amaze him. Had it always been like this? It seemed to him somehow different, clearer than the sun he had known before. There had been a before and an after: Death separated them. But now the undead were a distant thought, one day their memory would remain in the chronicles and stories of the old nurses. And in those who had seen them (and had survived to tell it), like him. He closed his eyes for a moment, but quickly shook his head to cast out that image and relegate it to a remote corner of his mind. Not remote enough, he thought. It would never be remote enough. A sliver of the cold winter would always remain within him, whether he wanted it or not.

When he opened his eyes, golden hair caught his sight. They were as clear as the sun. The blue of the sky and of the sea made their clarity even more evident. The wind, the same that caressed his face, moved them slightly. They resembled those of her mother, he thought as he crossed the bridge and approached the head to which they belonged. He knelt beside her and could not refrain from passing his hand, the good one of course, over it: they were just as soft as her mother's hair, yes. Myrcella's face appeared suddenly in his mind: it had been another journey across the Narrow Sea, that one. He felt his stomach twitch in a grip of sudden fear, but the blond head turned and it was a little girl's face that appeared. «Father!»

That name sounded foreign to his ears, as if it didn't belong to him. It took his breath away and at the same time filled him with a mixture of pride and insecurity. At that moment the little girl frowned her eyebrows with a troubled air. «Is it still far away? I don’t see anything» she sighed. «I'm tired of waiting.» 

Jaime could not help thinking that the impatience and obstinacy of her tone made her a real Lannister. He had told her to keep her eyes on the horizon and she had taken it literally: she had barely left the bridge for a moment that day. He smiled at her. «A little more patience, just a little. We are almost there.»

«Do you mean it, Father?» The little girl looked at him with big, confident eyes, but without taking her hands off the balustrade to which she was clinging on her tiptoes to be able to see something.

«Of course, honey. Sit down here with me, I will tell you when the time comes. I promise.»

The child obeyed, albeit a little hesitant. «Can you sing me a song?»

Cersei always asked their mother when they were children, before going to bed. Jaime then remained silent and listened to the melodious voice of Lady Joanna. «I... I am not good at singing» he replied instinctively, but there was nothing he could deny his daughter's pleading face. He was grateful that she hadn't known winter, and never would. He gave her another slight caress and began to sing, almost in a whisper, words that evoked a distant time:

_ High in the halls of the kings who are gone  _

_ Jenny would dance with her ghosts _

_ The ones she had lost and the ones she had found _

_ And the ones who had loved her the most. _

__

_ The ones who'd been gone for so very long _

_ She couldn't remember their names… _

«We do» a voice intervened behind their backs. Brienne, beautiful, more beautiful than ever, stood out against the sun. «We remember their names, don’t we, Catelyn?» She said with a smile.

_ Catelyn _ . His ghosts that day seemed determined to dance all together. She was not Cersei's daughter. Her hair ... It was Brienne that they resembled, like her eyes resembled the color of sapphires. She forced him to remember and atone for the past whenever he uttered her name. She could always, like her mother, push him to be a better man, worthy of her. Of them.

Tears came to his eyes. In the penetrating gaze of his daughter he even seemed to catch a resemblance to that of the late Lady Stark. Suddenly he also heard the words tinged with contempt that she had once addressed to him, but this time they came from his child’s mouth: «You are no knight. You have forsaken every vow you ever took.

She is a truer knight than you will ever be, King’s Slayer.

You are a man without honor.»

Then the sun dimmed, the ship began to swing more sharply and Brienne's face contracted in a spasm. Catelyn's lips trembled as she began to cry. «You promised, father!»

Jaime did not understand. The sky grew dark and the sea rough, at the mercy of the storm. «What is going on?» He shouted.

«You said you would warn me!» roared the little lioness.

It was then that he saw her in the distance... Tarth, the sapphire island. But it wasn’t getting any closer: he suddenly realized that the waves had changed the ship’s course. They were coming back. The figures of Brienne and Catelyn began to fade.

«Wait, stay!» He cried out in panic. Soon everything lost its shape and was swallowed up by darkness, himself included. Only a woman's voice remained, his mother's voice:

_ And she never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave _

_ Never wanted to leave, never wanted to leave. _

__

Jaime awoke with a start, sweating in spite of the cold. His heart was beating wildly and tears poured out without him being able prevent it. He let himself be shaken by sobs as perhaps he had never done, where no one could see him except the shadow of his wounded pride. To hell with pride. When he finally managed to dominate himself, in the darkness of the long night, it was the sorrowful gaze of Brienne and their dream daughter that occupied his mind. What was he doing?

He was just a coward. He had succumbed to fear and had fled. Watching her sleep... Her purity had terrified him. He had been caught by the feeling of contaminating her, he who was impure and dirty; he had thought that going away would do her a favor. Besides, it was easier to fall into the role that they sewed on him from a lifetime than to recognize himself as disarmed. Brienne disarmed him continuously, and not only in combat. But he was just a coward, this was the naked truth. He felt a sudden disgust towards himself. He hated himself for what he had done to the woman he loved. He was hateful, yes, and he was worthy of Cersei because she had poisoned him, poisoned him all his life, that poison had entered his blood by now, penetrating the fibers of his being.

To hell with Cersei, to hell with the Lannisters.

Let her die without me, he thought. He would kill her that same night, strangle that cruel ghost who whispered lies in soothing words. It was time to break that bond, now or never. He prayed that the gods, to whom he did not believe, were merciful to him. «Take away this pestilence and ruin from me, which creeping down to my inner most self like a paralysis takes away happiness from my whole heart» he begged, he who was not used to beg anyone.

Then he untied his horse, got into it, and resumed his gallop, but on the opposite side. «Forgive me, Brienne.»

He had proven himself a man without honor, but he would do anything to win it back. He did not know how. But wherever words could not reach her, he would have said, he knew it: «I dreamed of you.»

**Author's Note:**

> It is the first time I write a fanfiction in English, which is not my mother togue so I apologise if there are any mistakes. If there are, please do not hesitate to tell me and I'll correct them straight away!  
> Jaime's plea to the gods comes from the carme 76 by the Latin poet Catullus, in which he hopes to free himself from his love for Lesbia that (like Jaime's Cersei) grieves him like a disease.  
> Thank you for coming to the end. Any opinion or comment would be really well-accepted :)


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